I had one last thought about Mitt Romney that seemed worth sharing before the clock strikes twelve and he's officially yesterday's news.
I was not a fan of the Kill Bill movies, but I did appreciate one scene, near the end of KB2, that displayed the genius for pop banter that had characterized Quentin Tarantino's earlier films. In it, David Carradine explains (not entirely accurately) that Superman is unique in the comic-book universe: Whereas most superheroes' secret identities (Bruce Wayne, Peter Parker) are their true identities--the people they were before their parents were murdered or they were bitten by radioactive spiders or exposed to gamma rays or what have you--Superman was born Superman. It's Clark Kent that is the invented alias, the pose, the "costume." And in the way Superman plays Kent--weak, self-doubting, cowardly--we see his critique of the human race.
It occurred to me that the same is true of Romney's desperate, if never terribly persuasive, impersonation of a conservative Republican. That persona--angry, simple-minded, xenophobic, jingoistic--is exactly what Romney (who is himself cultured, content, and cosmopolitan) imagines the average GOP voter to be.
Here's the Carradine clip:
--Christopher Orr